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yesterday” (Twelve 39). These driving factors and their close kin, coupled with an incapability to
deal with them, fuel the drive of nearly every sufferer to seek comfort in their poison of choice.

In the final part of his soul-stirring poem, Coleridge recounts two more immediate nights
prior to relief. Both are filled with sleeplessness and torment arising from “unfathomable hell
within” (46). A summation of his beliefs regarding the cause of this torture can be found in the
following lines: “Such punishments, I said, were due / To natures deepliest stained with sin” (43-
44).

It’s clear that a cluster of predilections found unworthy or evil in the author’s eyes are
blamed for successive days of disturbance. Ironically, though his thoughts might have been
somewhat askew, Coleridge was not far off from one of the staunchest problems plaguing the
addicted. Most are struggling, at their core, with character defects, as it says in Twelve Steps and
Twelve Traditions:

Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with his fellows. We would like
to be assured that the grace of god can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We
have seen that character defects based upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the
obstacles that block our path toward these objectives (76).
He is clearly wrestling with open acknowledgement and acceptance of these defects.
Directly, Coleridge returns to a concept somewhat already discussed with the line
“To know and loathe, yet wish and do!” (48). This line, possibly more than any other, defines
him as an addict. Knowing that his actions will cause distress, he continues with them in a dark
circle that produces deep levels of self-loathing. This cycle is the very definition of addiction as
Alcoholics Anonymous defines it: “By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they
will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule,” (31) “…thereby setting the terrible cycle in

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